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Import Standard Steel Profiles in ARCHICAD

If you work regularly with Structural Steel components and exchange data with Structural software using IFC - you might find it useful to use the Standard Profiles for Columns and Beams that are available within ARCHICAD.

The database contains national standards for 32 localizations… even if you work outside your home country, there is still a high chance you will find the Profile you need! Within each national standard there are hundreds of options available for a range of geometry types: I/H, C/U, T, L, Rectangular and Circular.

Import Standard Steel Profile

The first thing to do is set your Country Code as highlighted in the image above. This ensures you are working with the correct localized standard profiles.

The next thing you do is select the Geometry type for the profile you wish to import as shown below:

The options are:

In this example, we want to find the profile called W6X12 and import this to our project.

To help with finding a particular profile we can click on the Column headers of the Available Profiles to order the list by Profile Name or various key dimensions of the profile itself:

Once ordered correctly, we can use the slider to scroll (or use the mouse wheel) to find the Profile we require.

The process to add the profile is very simple:

Select the Profile you require

Click Add Profile to the Project

Select the Imported Profile

Change to Assigned Building Material to the one you require

If you accidentally bring in the wrong Profile - click the Remove button.

If you have added all the profiles you require - click the Import button to complete the process. The selected profile(s) are now available to use in your ARCHICAD Project.

Place a Standard Steel Profile Column or Beam

The imported profiles are accessed and used via the regular ARCHICAD Column or Beam Tool.

To place a Steel Column, double click on the Column Tool to access the default settings.

Set the regular parameters such as height, position, links to stories etc then choose Complex Profile as the Structure type. The enables the flyout where you can choose the required profile as highlighted below:

When you click the flyout you see a preview of the selected profile to the top with a list of available profiles to the bottom:

Once you have configured the Column (or Beam) with the parameters you require, you simply click OK and placed the elements in the normal way.

If you want to see this process in action - check out the video on our YouTube channel shown below:

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